The Bet
by effection
Summary: A shallow, conceited Spike makes a bet with his buddy, Angel, concerning the new girl at Sunnydale High and how quick he'll be able to get in her pants. Little does he know that this bet and this girl will be the one that draws him to reality.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

Some people hated moving, especially in high school. High school, they would complain, is a four-year experience that has to be lived in the same town, with the same people, same environment, same, well,… everything, basically. Otherwise, life would utterly be ruined and you would die. More or less.

Strangely enough, this wasn't the case with a particular girl that went by the name of Buffy Summers.

At the moment, she was staring at the full-length mirror at her polo-shirt and khaki pants claden body, reminiscing the old days. Well, not so much with the reminiscing, and more with the shuddering-at-the-dreadful-memory. It all started on a bright sunny morning on the first day of kindergarten. A day that all kids looked forward to…

_flashback – kindergarten  
……………………………………_

"Hi, I'm Melanie, what's your name?" the dark-haired, bouncy girl asked Buffy with a toothy grin. Buffy grinned back, happy to have made a friend so quickly.

"My name's Buffy!" she replied happily.

Melanie wrinkled her nose. "Buffy? Like huffy Buffy? Shmuffy Buffy, Fluffy Wuffy!"

Buffy blinked. She didn't understand the girl's problem. "Yeah!"

"I hate you," Melanie decided, turning her back on the blonde in pigtails. "Buffy's a stupid name."  
……………………………………

end flashback

And so it had continued through first grade, elementary school, intermediate, and when she thought junior high would change all things… it hadn't. First off, she tried out for the cheerleading squad. Big mistake that turned out to be, earning her the name of "Kluffy" – an ingenious mix of 'klutz' and 'Buffy'. Cheerleaders were so original.

After that incident, she had become a pronounced nerd who's only friend was her brand new TI-83 calculator, silver edition to boot. And of course,… once a nerd, always a nerd. Throughout junior high and into high school. Well that is, until the summer before junior year.

Which brought her back to standing in front of her full-length mirror, staring back at the class loser in the reflection.

While most normal teenagers would have kicked and screamed at the notion of moving halfway through high school, Buffy welcomed it with open arms. The way she saw it – new school, new image, no more loser-Buffy. _Sounds like a plan to me_, she thought with a small smile, carefully fingering her messy locks of brown hair and thick, wire-rimmed glasses.

_New school, new image, new Buffy._

Sunnydale High School, beware.

…………………………

Buffy stared at the racks of clothing in front of her at _Armani Exchange_ and immediately felt completely lost. With her mother's credit card safely tucked into the wallet that she was clutching with a sweaty hand, she was reminded, again, that this was the first time she had ever gone shopping. Alone. Her mother was nowhere to be found – most likely mesmerized by a wok over in _The KitchenWare_ at the other end of the mall.

"Excuse me, miss," an sales assistant approached her with a huge smile, "can I help you?"

Turning, Buffy gulped and nodded her head. Oh boy.

………………………………………………………………

**Meanwhile**

"You're breaking up with me?" Spike Pratt's voice was laced with disbelief. He heard a sigh over the telephone line and knew his girlfriend – ex-girlfriend as of a second or so ago – was twirling the cord in her finger and probably rolling her eyes around.

"Yes, William," she said, sounding a little exasperated, "I'm breaking up with you."

"Okay…" he drawled out, trying to prolong the conversation, "what exactly brought about this change of heart?"

"Nothing much," she shrugged, holding the cordless phone between her ear and shoulder as she filed a nail, "Got bored of you, mainly."

"_Bored_ of me!" Spike roared, leaping up to his feet. Drusilla winced, and pulled the phone away from her ear. "It's been _one_ bloody month and you're bored of me?! Do you even _know_ who you're talking to, Dru?"

Drusilla held her breath and counted to five, listening for the inevitable _'My name is Spike Pratt! My da owns this and that and I'm the blah blah of the soccer team and all these girls would blah blah blah blah'_… she had heard it once too many times already.

"I'm _Spike_," he emphasized his name, "Do you _know_ how many girls would be dying to be in your shoes right now, you stupid cow? I _own_ the football team, my da owns all the – "

The line went dead.

"- companies… Dru?" he asked into the phone then brought it away from his ear to frown at it. "Drusilla? Dru! DRU!?"

Frustrated, he slammed the phone down in its cradle. _Fucking bitch_, he glared at it before storming out of his room.

_Sod it all. I'll show her._

…………………………………

"Well… do you love her?" Angel asked, panting a little bit as he moved to the right to hit the ball with his tennis racket.

"Course I do," Spike grunted as the ball made contact with his own racket and flew back across the net. "Best bloody shag ever, mate."

Angel backhanded it and sighed. "That's not what I meant – "

"And her mouth," his friend continued, not faltering a beat, "wow… that's the only word. The things she would do – "

The sun was high in the hot afternoon and both boys were sweating from playing tennis for over an hour or so.

"Who does she think she is?" Spike complained as Angel served. The ball came flying to his side neatly, and he swung his racket, not really paying attention. "She can't just _leave_ me because she's bored."

"Actually,… yeah, she can," Angel informed him. Spike glared. "Is it that hard to believe someone would break up with you, Spike?"

"Uh – " Spike pretended to think, rolling his eyes up to the top of his head and forgetting to hit the ball that came his way. "Yeah."

"Has anyone ever thrown the words 'egotistical bastard' to you?" Angel asked, sighing and tossing his racket to the side of the court and walking over to his bag to get a bottle of water. Spike shrugged.

"Once or twice…" he counted, nonchalantly, then added, "Though, it mostly came from women, Peaches."

"Don't call me that," Angel growled, annoyed.

"Don't rightly care, though," he continued, ignoring his friend, "Egotistical is as egotistical does. I can have anyone in the bloody school and Dru knows that."

Angel raised an eyebrow and threw a cold water bottle to his friend.

"Right…"

A/N: kay, there's a start... tell me how you guys like it. so far, at least.


	2. Chapter 2

(just so you guys know... Buffy still has brown hair in this chapter. It'll change in a little bit. I also realized that i had her with blonde hair when she was in kindergarten last chapter... My bad. Or... can people start off with blonde hair when they're kids and have it darken to a natural brown?)

**Chapter Two**

Buffy pulled her Mustang into the visitor's parking lot in front of the school. She could see students everywhere, getting out of their cars, calling out to their friends, excited – or some, not so excited – to start a new year. Students everywhere who didn't know who she was… her breath strangled itself in her throat.

Nervously fiddling with the frayed edge of her skirt that covered half of her newly-tanned thigh, Buffy closed her eyes and tried to relax her nerves. She pulled down the mirror from her sun-visor and took one last glance at her appearance. Her straight, brown hair was twisted into two loose French braids that fell down either side of her head and her glasses were just a little bit lopsided. Frowning, she tried to adjust them; contacts were out of the question since she had stuck the mascara wand into her right eye and had spent half an hour washing it out and crying. Today would definitely be the last day she ever tried applying that horrible stuff.

"Okay… rule number twenty-nine," she said to herself, getting out of the car and smoothing her skirt down over her thighs. "Head up, shoulders back, walk tall. Well… try to walk tall. Give a good first impression."

With that, she threw her shoulders back, put on a megawatt smile and walked to her full 5'3'' potential all the way down to the front entrance.

Sunnydale beware, Buffy Summers is here.

"I could name a million birds who would kill to have been Drusilla!" Spike fumed. Angel and Oz gave each other matching faces and rolled their eyes simultaneously.

"He's still going on about that," Angel muttered so only Oz could hear him.

"Apparently," Oz agreed.

"I mean, I gave her everything," Spike continued, "Beautiful jewels, beautiful diamonds, beautiful dresses with beautiful girls in them – "

"There, my man, is your problem," Angel cut him off, grinning, "You gave Drusilla dolls? What the hell, man?"

"They were antique! From Italy!" Spike argued, glaring, "Cost a bloody fortune, they did."

Angel kept grinning and shaking his head. "You probably _scared_ her away. I mean, what,… you went out with her for _one month_? Pricey gifts are scheduled for the third month anniversary, buddy."

Spike gave him an incredulous look, then turned to Oz. "Did the big Poof just give me dating advice?"

"Think so," Oz replied, noncommittally. Angel shot him a look and he shrugged.

"Thought that's what I heard…," Spike started laughing and raised an eyebrow in Angel's direction. "You want to talk to me about shoulder pads and rugby uniforms, that's all fine and dandy. But when it comes to pleasing women? That's my expertise there, mate."

Slapping Angel on the back, he turned his back and swaggered down another hall to head to his first period Calculus class.

Glaring at Spike's retreating figure, Angel grumbled under his breath, "Well, last time I checked, I wasn't the one that got dumped after one month."

Spike was bored out of his mind. His Calculus BC teacher was even less entertaining than the Calc AB teacher last year. And that was saying something. He felt his eyelids start to droop and his head start to get heavy.

_Nice, Caribbean beach with girls in bikinis everywhere… no, make it European beach… with nude girls everywhere… Ah. This was the life._.. his mind was about to wander off to a happy place when suddenly the door to the classroom swung open.

All heads shot up and turned to look at the intruder. Well, all heads except for Mr. Travers, the teacher. He continued rambling on and on about something… "_Blah blah blah derivatives, blah blah integrals, blah blah area, calculus, blahty da da_."

A short, cute brunette girl in a short, cute denim skirt was standing by the doorway, biting her lip and seeming incredibly nervous. She was playing with one of the French braids that hung from her head and glanced around the classroom uneasily. It was obvious she wasn't sure what she should do and Spike grinned in spite of himself.

"Yo, Mr. T," a voice called out. Mr. Travers spun around and stared at the black guy in the third row who was waving his hand around. "Some chick by the door," the hand pointed in the new girl's direction.

Mr. Travers turned his head and stared at her. She smiled a little and handed him a slip of paper. He took it and squinted.

"All right, just pick a seat," he said in his monotonous voice and went right back to facing the blackboard and talking about derivatives.

Buffy quickly scanned the classroom for an empty seat and found one in front of a guy with funny-looking bleached hair. She hurried to it and sat down, thankful that the teacher hadn't made her introduce herself to the class.

The guy behind her was drumming his desk with a pencil. It was starting to get irritating, but she didn't say a word about it and just reached down to the floor to pick a notebook from her backpack to take notes with.

She realized that she had forgotten to bring a pencil or a pen or any type of writing utensil. Groaning, she put her head in her hand. _Nice job, Buffy,_ she scolded herself, _first day of school and you forget a pencil. Real good._

Suddenly, something poked her from behind.

She swiveled around and found herself staring into the bluest eyes she had ever seen in her life. The blue-eyed guy gave her a smirk and held up his pencil for her, lifting up an eyebrow as if daring her to take it. In a bit of a dazed shock, she took the pencil, gave him a small smile, then turned back around. To take notes. But for some reason, every time the teacher said 'function', she found herself thinking back to the blue eyes and the blonde hair.

Weird.

The bell rang and Spike let out a relieved sigh. The girl in front of him tucked a loose strand of hair that had fallen out of her braid behind her ear and jumped to her feet. Spike smiled, noticing that her short skirt had risen a little bit, giving him quite a pleasant view.

She leaned down to grab her backpack and Spike's smile grew wider. Feeling confident, he got to his feet slowly and took one step towards her. She didn't notice his head lowering itself to her ear level and she didn't notice his hand come closer to her body until it made contact with the small of her back.

She jumped up with a little squeal and heard a deep voice purr into her ear.

"I see London, I see France," Spike whispered into her ear, letting his hand run down her back slowly.

She shivered and he fought back the urge to laugh before tugging down on her skirt from behind. "I see Betty's underpants."

He saw her face turn a nice, solid shade of fuchsia and awarded her with a little wink and a big smirk. With that, he headed towards the door and out of the calculus room.

Buffy stared at his back with wide eyes.

"Dammit," she muttered under her breath, swinging her backpack over her shoulder and following him out of the classroom. "Rule number thirty-nine. Always pull your skirt down before sitting as to not give freak behind me an eyeful when I get up. I'm such an idiot."


End file.
